Motivation is key to behavior change in teaching and learning processes. Motivated teachers are thought to be more likely to be willing to experiment with different instructional approaches in the classroom. Motivated students are hypothesized to put forth extra effort during learning activities. These assumptions posit that incentives, or rewards based on evidence of behavior change, may have a role to play in enhancing the motivation of teachers and students. This report presents findings from a short-term incentive pilot program conducted in one governorate in Jordan. During this pilot, students in treatment schools were offered a symbolic (non-monetary) incentive if they read at least 24 books at home over the 8-week implementation period. Teachers were offered a symbolic incentive if they received high scores from coaches during most (at least 50%) of their observed classroom lessons. This report presents findings from this pilot program.

وفيما يتعلق بالأدوات التي تم استخدامها في هذا المشروع – مشروع المسح الوطني لتقييم القراءة والحساب للصفوف الأولى)إيجرا وإيجما( في الأردن – فقد تمت مواءمتها بشكل خاص لكي تتلاءم مع المنهاج الأردني، وذلك من خلال ورشة مواءمة ضمت متخصصين تربويين من وزارة التربية والتعليم ومن معهد تراينجل للأبحاث )أر.تي.آي إنترناشيونال() RTI )International الذين عملوا جنباً إلى جنب مع خبراء التعليم الأساسي ومعلمي القراءة والحساب المحليين ) الأردنيين( وذلك من اجل الخروج بتصاميم )نماذج( مختصرة لتقييم القراءة وتقييم الحساب في الصفوف الأولى، )إيجرا وإيجما( باستخدام مواد مناهج الصف الثاني والثالث. إضافة إلى تقديم تقييمات شفوية فردية للطلبة. وقد قام معهد أر.تي.أي إنترناشيونال ) RTI International( بالتعاون مع شريكه، دجاني للاستشارات، بإرسال فرق بحث لمقابلة مدراء المدارس والمعلمين، وكذلك لإجراء جرد لمصادر التعلم في المدارس والصفوف، ولملاحظة دروس الحساب والقراءة كجزء من المسح القائم لوصف مدى فعالية الإدارة المدرسية. في آذار 2012، بعد أسبوع من التدريب، قامت فرق البحث، والمكونة من فريق عمل شركة الدجاني للاستشارات والمتعاقدين وكذلك أفراد من العاملين في وزارة التربية والتعليم، بزيارة ما مجمله 156 من المدارس الابتدائية حول الأردن. وقد تم اختيار معلم للصف الثاني وآخر للصف الثالث بشكل عشوائي من كل مدرسة، وقد تم أيضا اختيار 10 طلبة بشكل عشوائي من هذه الصفوف لإجراء تقييم مهارات القراءة والحساب للصفوف الأولى )إيجرا وإيجما(، وكذلك إجراء مقابلات معهم للحديث حول تجربتهم في المدرسة. وقد تم اختيار 3120 طالباً للمشاركة في التقييمات والمقابلات. وبالفعل، تم مقابلة المعلمين الذين تم اختيارهم، كما قام أحد كبار المعلمين، في وجود أحد الباحثين، برصد أداء معلم الصف الثاني أثناء تقديمه لدرس القراءة ودرس الحساب. وقد قام الباحثون بعمل جرد لساحات المدرسة والغرف الصفية المختارة. وقد تم الانتهاء من جمع البيانات في نهاية أيار 2012.

To gain insight into both student facility with foundational skills and to better understand characteristics among Jordanian schools associated with this performance, USAID/Jordan, in partnership with the Jordan Ministry of Education (MOE), contracted with RTI International under the Education Data for Decision Making (EdData II) project to conduct the SSME, including the EGRA and EGMA, in a sample of primary schools in Jordan. The hope is that evidence-based information resulting from the survey can inform future education policy decisions, as needed. The instruments used in this project—the National Early Grade Literacy and Numeracy Survey in Jordan—were adapted specifically for the Jordanian context during an adaptation workshop with the Ministry of Education. RTI’s education specialists worked together with local Jordanian reading, math, and primary school experts and officials to design abbreviated versions of the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) and the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA), using curriculum materials for grades 2 and 3. In addition to administering individual oral assessments of students, RTI and its local partner, Dajani Consulting, sent research teams to interview School Principals and teachers, conduct inventories of school and classroom resources, and observe reading and math lessons as part of the SSME survey.

Egypt, currently in the throes of major political change, will likely undergo reforms of various sorts in the next few years. Some of these reforms are likely to give local entities, including schools, greater control over education finances. In 2007, the Government of Egypt began to decentralize some non-personnel recurrent finances from the center—the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance (MOF)—to lower-level jurisdictions, including schools, using a number of simple and transparent enrollment- and poverty-based funding formulas. By 2010, a sizable amount of capital expenditure was also being transferred to lower levels of the system via similar equity- based funding formulas. Prior to these formula-based decentralization efforts, a large amount of education-related non-personnel recurrent finances had already been moving from the MOF to the muderiyat, education offices at the governorate level of the system. Analysis of these latter allocations reveals that they are highly inequitable on an inter-governorate per-student basis, ranging from EGP 966 per student in New Valley to EGP 25 per student in 6th of October. This paper examines the nature and potential causes of this inequity and espouses a way in which these funds could be transferred using an equity-based funding formula that holds harmless those muderiyat that would lose absolute amounts of money under such a more equitable distribution scheme.

This analysis report was written to gain insight into both student facility with foundational skills and to better understand characteristics among Iraqi schools associated with this performance. In 2012, USAID/Iraq, in partnership with the Ministry of Education (MoED), contracted with RTI International under the Education Data for Decision Making (EdData II) project to conduct an EGRA, EGMA, and SSME in a sample of primary schools in Iraq.

This brief discusses an intervention in Jordan which was developed following the 2012 EGRA and EGMA revealed that Jordanian children in the early grades were not reading with comprehension or doing mathematics with understanding. As a result, the MoE Curriculum Team and the Senior Reading and Mathematics Supervisors, to develop an intervention pilot research program that would support teachers in providing deliberate, structured, and developmentally appropriate daily practice in foundational skills for reading and mathematics.

This brief discusses Jordan's remedial pilot research program which was designed to assist teachers in improving the performance of those children who had fallen behind the general performance level of the rest of the class. The program focused on Arabic reading and mathematics in grades 1, 2, and 3. The rationale of the program is that children who are not performing at the general level of the class can benefit from additional instructional support that is aimed at their individual level of learning.

This report, translated in Arabic, discusses the impact and results of the pilot intervention that was implemented during the 2013-2014 school year across 43 schools reaching more than 400 teachers and approximately 12,000 students in Jordan.

This report discusses the impact and results of the pilot intervention that was implemented during the 2013-2014 school year across 43 schools reaching more than 400 teachers and approximately 12,000 students in Jordan.

This report presents key findings of the first baseline of early grade reading skills implemented in the West Bank. This EGRA for Grade 2 was conducted in March 2014 in a representative sample of 150 Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MOEHE) primary schools, stratified by school gender and selected randomly from 16 districts in the West Bank. The 2,953 tested students were randomly selected from Grade 2 enrollment lists prior to each school visit. The results are representative of MOEHE Grade 2 students and primary schools in West Bank.